Dhokla: Steamed Gram Flour

Dhokla is a snack typical of the region of Gujarat, and are small diamond shaped spongy, steamed, made ​​from semolina and chickpea flour, very tasty and slightly spicy. They are served at breakfast or during the day, accompanied by a cup of tea. The potentially health conscious character of this dish is negated by the amount of oil used to fry the spices and seeds.
Khaman Dhokla are the ones you see are squares made ​​from a soft cake chickpeas. It is an Indian recipe. They are great when I put them on the table are selling fast! India is a home to some of the most popular, delicious and amazing street food from around the world.In India you can discover new and interesting street foods and sellers in every streets of India. Indian cuisine has always been in the mind of every traveler and millions of people from U.S., UK, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, China, Thailand, Italy, Dubai, Pakistan, etc., go to India to taste and see his great food, interesting cultures and culinary skills of the expert street food Masters.

In the kitchen India amazes with the flavors of his dishes infinite, different from region to region, a true reflection of its long history, its religious and philosophical conceptions and of its complex civilization. The fireworks aggressive flavors of Indian cuisine, spices, curry and chili, furiously assail the palate off and aseptic western traveler, setting it on fire to tears, to let him feel her lips and mouth burned. After the first impact of Indian cuisine will unveil the endless flavors of the dishes, which vary from region to region. You have to win every distrust of strangers flavors and dishes, forget the proverbial spaghetti at home and deal with curiosity the adventure of Indian cuisine.

Humans are what they eat, and eat the food of the country you visit is a way to learn about its people. All Indians eat elegantly with your hands use the thumb, index and middle fingers of his right hand making small pellets of food they can move quickly in the mouth without damage and greedily almost in silence, oblivious of their diners or the reality around. Alternate spicy to sweet to calm the fire of spices. Finished eating belch, spit, rinsed his mouth, brushing teeth with long wooden sticks. So do all those things that Westerners consider inappropriate.

For the Indian feed is part of the daily ritual and something spontaneous and natural. In India you eat with the intent of gaining the balance of physical and above all spiritual. On the eating habits of the Indians so greatly affects religion. The Hindu absolutely not eat beef, except, but also in this case very rarely, the untouchable. Intertwine then infinite taboo caste that make certain foods, for certain caste, decidedly impure and therefore inedible, and which lay down specific rules for the preparation of food.

The Brahmins and the followers of Vishnu Vaishnava are totally vegetarian, others only partially. Others are not for nothing. A complex world of intricate rules that can be discovered only by observing the Indians eat and asking them an outline of. The Jains are strict vegetarians. I do not even eat eggs. In this way, respect each animal existence. Muslims reject the pork. On the other hand make the best dishes of lamb and mutton.

Flavours aggressive, overwhelming, sometimes unexpectedly delicate, always made ​​from spices, curry and chili. All divided into six different shades of taste rasas, whose mixture is observed at every meal. To achieve harmony must therefore combine the sour with the sweet, spicy and bitter, sour and salty. Foods common to all the diverse Indian cuisine are rice plain rice, boiled rice or pulao, jumped to the butter, lentils from, to the south, sambar, yogurt.

The most common seasonings are: curry , with at least 25 different types of spices, masala, a mixture of pepper, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon finely ground; chutney , a kind of mustard with vegetables and fruit mango good one and spices; ghee, clarified butter. Bread is done in various ways and almost always served hot. It does not have the shape of the loaf of bread, but that enlarged a big pancake. Ingredients: to the north, wheat, in the South, rice. The breads are the most common: chapati , without yeast, just flour, salt and butter; paratha , sometimes stuffed with vegetables or legumes; nan , baked and brushed with melted margarine; poori , full length, white flour leavened fried in seed oil, roti , flat and thin almost transparent.

The most usual dishes are lamb, mutton and chicken cooked in a sauce of butter purified and spices. Also in the kitchen the Mughals have left deep traces. The chicken tandoori baked in charcoal and brushed with red chili served with yogurt, salad onions and radicchio. The nan bread is covered with poppy seeds. The pulao is made ​​of spiced rice cooked in saffron stew with boiled eggs. And then the kebab marinated; chicken makhanwala , cooked in butter sauce; aloo chhole made ​​of chickpeas and diced potatoes.

A lot of the desserts mithai honey, gulab jamun, dipped in syrup, laddu, son halwa and barfi, coconut, almonds and pistachios. The fish in the delta of the Ganges is the main ingredient of many recipes: fried, curry, yogurt. The rice is prepared in various ways: with lentils and spices, steamed with a stew of mutton, with herbs, with shrimp and seafood. Still fish along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Betki is the most common way to cook it: slowly cooked in coconut milk and flavored with spices. The coconut is also the basic ingredient of chutney. The desserts are sweet cream and milk sandesh, condensed milk, pistachios, cashews, peanuts, yogurt or cream; rosogollas, balls of cream drowned in syrup.

The thali is the way to serve the food. For the rich the circular tray thali with numerous compartments, it is silver, for ordinary mortals is of stainless steel. In the villages broad leaves sewn together to replace him. Dominant vegetarian cuisine whose ingredients change depending on the season: flan chickpeas Khaman Dhokla, toasted cereals, flour, garlic, chutney and sugar paunk curry with yogurt, pancakes, bay leaves, ginger and chopped vegetables and rice khadi. The Parsis have traditional dish as a stew of lamb or chicken cooked with curry and lentils, served with hot rice dhansak. In Goa, the Portuguese have changed the eating habits of the premises; a lot of fish, but also pork: vindaloo , pork marinated in vinegar; sorpotel, liver, pork with spicy sauce.

Among the desserts Mumbai halwa, brightly colored jelly with chopped walnuts, covered with a thin leaf of silver Srikhand, yogurt with cardamom, nuts and candied fruit; poori , puffy fritters. Among the fruit mangoes quality Alfonso. Rice and more rice. Coconut and coconut yet. The rice is present in every meal of the day and it is cooked in a thousand ways, all spicy hot. The coconut comes in various recipes such as oil, thick and fragrant, or as pulp, so in appam , rice and coconut pancake of fermented and cooked in a clay pot. Fish here too.

From the North, in addition to the kebab and pulao, it's biryani , dear Muslims: stew of mutton or chicken with rice pilaf. Unique and laborious preparation are the ' haleem stew with corn and fried onion; the Nahari , spiced mutton cooked over a slow fire for a whole night. And the thali reigns supreme here. Desserts are made ​​from marzipan badam ki jali, milk and cereal sprinkled with coconut or coffee powder. And then every variety of exotic fruits: papayas, bananas, mangoes, pineapple.

The dish more used to eat the banana leaf is that once the meal bends and throws it away. It is often one of the ubiquitous cows to make one bite. For quick snacks during the day or in the stages of transfer, the countless stalls, which are found everywhere, offer solutions yummy fritters of all types and sizes, and the ubiquitous fried vegetable samosas, triangles of pastry filled with curried vegetables. Each meal ends with dignity only with the pan a mixture of lime, arecanut, spices. All well mixed and wrapped in a betel leaf green stop by a clove.

Digestive like coffee, urges the mood gastric and salivation. In fact, long sketches of saliva redden the sidewalks and street corners all over India and is responsible for the smiles ruby flashing mouths of the Indians. In the great lunches the landlord offers its guests the ingredients because everyone packs the pan to your liking. Usually this complicated mixture is sold on glittering banquet filled with caps on street corners.

Quench your thirst turned on the heat, the dust and the heat of the spices is always a bit 'problematic. The water pani with or without fresh ice is better to forget it, even if the restaurant would serve just sits there, often in tall glasses of stainless steel. Better to fall back on more expensive mineral water or soda. The Italian Bisleri introduced it giving it an odd flavor of straw. It is now also arrived here the bottled mineral water with the French system.

Among the well-known fizzy drinks and refreshing are the Limca , the lemon, the Campa Cola , a draft of Coca Cola, the Thumbs Up, the Double Seven . The fruit juices are made ​​instantly seductive, like the juice of sugar cane that comes out of a tangle of gear. To forget these too, unless you be sure that you have added ice or water. Apple juice Apco, present practically only in Kashmir, and that of mango; the nimbu pani, lemon juice, green; the nira , coconut milk once drank all the juice, you can savor the fresh pulp); the lassi made ​​with fresh yogurt, diluted with whey; the curd , yogurt.

Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are dry states it is prohibited the sale of any alcoholic beverages including beer. Tourists are exempt from this rule prohibitionist. Just ask for the All India Liquor Permit to the relevant offices embassies, tourist offices , police stations and pay extortionate prices to be able to drink, even in dry days (usually the prohibition is triggered in many states over the weekend), spirits of local production bad or import.

Good beer, mildly alcoholic: Golden Eagle, Kingfisher, Cannon and Rosy Pelican top brands. The Indian wines are found only in the places of production, Goa, similar to the harbor; Hyderabad, the wine of Golconda; Kashmir. Local spirits are pleasing the asha Rajasthan, the fenny brandy distilled from the fruits of cashew nuts, cashew nut tree, or from coconut, the toddy palm flower extract.

But the national drink is tea chai, always great: inside a steaming kettle, stirred with care, are mixed together with tea, often buffalo milk and sugar tea mixed. Everything is brought to a boil, filtered through a cotton cloth and served in glasses. Some sellers are performing in a sort of virtuosic passage of tea from one container to another without making it fall even a drop. The same procedure is brewed coffee. A variant of the chai is masala tea with the addition of cardamom and ginger.

Sieve the gram flour. Mix it with the yoghurt, ginger and green chilli pastes, turmeric powder, salt to taste, 1 tsp oil, lime juice and sugar and warm water to make a batter of pouring consistency. Mix well. Divide the batter into 3 equal portions. Keep aside to ferment for 10 hours.

Prepare the steamer and grease a pan to steam the dhokla in. Divide the baking soda into 3 equal portions and add one portion to the batter and 2 tsp of water. When the bubbles form, mix well.

Pour this batter into the greased dish and put it into the steamer. Sprinkle black pepper powder evenly over it. Steam in a steamer for 10 minutes or till the dhoklas are cooked.

Repeat with the remaining batter, adding the baking soda to each batch of batter just before steaming. Allow the steamed Dhokla to cool slightly and cut into diamond shaped equal pieces.

To temper, heat the oil in a wide pan and add the curry leaves, mustard and sesame seeds and green chillies. Fry till the seeds stop spluttering. Pour these into the warm water. Sprinkle this mixture all over the prepared Dhokla. Keep aside for 10 minutes.

Garnish with the chopped coriander and serve with Tamarind Chutney and Mint Coriander Chutney.